


cause the truth has settled in

by pawn_vs_player



Series: you're getting big, you're wanting more [2]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (hey did y'all know meredith was 17 when she got pregnant), Altered Mental States, Alternate Canon, Canonical Character Death, Domestic Horror, Dubious Consent, Ego (Marvel) Is His Own Warning, F/M, Gen, Mental Coercion, Mental Link, Monster Baby, Peter Quill Has Issues, Power Imbalance, Statutory Rape, Terminal Illnesses, Unhealthy Relationships, and therefore, in related news Meredith Quill Deserves Better, lack of bodily autonomy, mild body horror, the following tags are all for ego/meredith:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25025611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pawn_vs_player/pseuds/pawn_vs_player
Summary: She wonders if there are other mothers out in the universe that are afraid to look in their own baby's eyes. It's a question she will never ask.(Meredith Quill, mother at 18 to a child meant to consume the universe, is not having an easy time of things.)prequel/companion to "there's a certain man you know", but can be read as a standalone.
Relationships: Ego the Living Planet/Meredith Quill, Meredith Quill & Peter Quill
Series: you're getting big, you're wanting more [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1605130
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40
Collections: fear so intricate it’s indistinguishable from beauty; beauty so unbearable it’s indistinguishable from fear





	cause the truth has settled in

**Author's Note:**

> first order of business - recommended background listening: "Panic Room" by Au/Ra (from which i nabbed the title), "Jenny of Oldstones" by Florence + the Machine (if you can separate it from GoT), and also possibly "Plastic Soul" by This World Fair since that seems to be the theme song for this weird character study series i'm apparently doing now.  
> more importantly: _please_ read the tags. this is a story about a teenage girl who was impregnated by a cosmic entity who later murdered her because he caught feelings. their relationship, while not the central focus of this story, is incredibly toxic and there will be allusions to sexual encounters with variously dubious degrees of consent. be safe, everyone.  
> with that out of the way --  
> i graduated today. i'm still having a lot of feelings, so i decided to finish up the WIP that has roughly the same concentration of feels for the occasion. thank you to everyone who reads my contributions to the beautiful invention that is AO3, and a special thank you to the darlings who have left comments on literally anything i've written. you're the best.

When he was just a slight bump under her palm, she loved him for his father. She hadn't planned on getting pregnant, but her angel was just so happy at the idea of being a father, even though both of them knew he couldn't stay -- so she kept the baby. She kept the baby even as the town turned away from her, even as her own family told her to _get rid of it either now or when it comes out, Meddy, and it'll be easier now_ \-- she kept the baby because she loved its father.

But the baby grew, swelling out her belly, its movements the fluttering of butterfly wings against her insides. It grew and kicked and made her crave pickles and peanut butter at three in the morning, and sometimes when she slept on her side she could hear her angel singing to her and stroking her stomach, and she could almost see the child they would have: a soft face, knobby knees and elbows, floppy brown hair, her angel's eyes.

The baby grew, and it became her baby, and then it became her son, and by the time she looked like she had swallowed a prize-winning watermelon she was humming to him as she wobbled from room to room, rubbing her belly when he kicked, yelling back at her mother when she tried to put adoption paperwork under Meredith's cereal bowl.

-

Birth is like nothing else. It is a pain like nothing else, a burning tearing stretch from the deepest core of her body, a round little life she loves ripping her open. She screams until her voice breaks. One of the nurses is kind enough to let Meredith crush her hand as she strains, gasps, pushes and trembles and fights to get her baby out of her.

She closes her eyes, panting through her nose. The ghost of a warm hand, a heavy breeze, slides through her sweat-matted hair. _Brandy_ , whispers a voice she knows better than her own. _What a good wife you would be_.

She grits her teeth and --

"Congratulations," someone says, but Meredith barely hears it over the piercing wail of her son.

They clean him up, wrap him in a soft purple blanket, and put him in her arms. She presses her nose into his feathery hair, breathing him in, and thinks: look, angel, look what we made.

-

(In the back of her mind she hears: _he's beautiful_.)

-

Someone comes in with the birth certificate. She has his name picked out: a good name, a family name. (She wants them to love him. She wants so badly for him to have more family than just her and the empty outline of a father that will never come back.) She'll come home and show off her beautiful little boy, her Peter, and her father will hug her and her mother will kiss her baby's head and they'll be a family again, a bigger one, a better one.

The certificate sits on the hospital table, blank, waiting. She picks up the pen, presses the nib to the heavy paper.

Her baby snuffles. She meets his eyes.

-

His name is Peter. Her son is Peter Quill and that is final.

(What came out of the pen in between those names _does not matter_.)

-

(She cannot say her son's middle name unless she is looking into his eyes.)

-

Her father opens the front door to her. Peter wriggles a hand out of his blanket, reaching for his grandfather.

"Come in," he says, holding the door open wide.

-

Peter Quill is a loud, energetic baby. He flails and screams and tries to wriggle out of everyone's arms. He only quiets when Meredith sits him in her lap and sings.

She becomes a tea drinker on day four of being a mom. She can't afford to lose her voice.

-

Her mother never stops looking at Peter like he's a muddy kitten scratching up the living room curtains. Meredith would have screamed at her for it, but she holds him and feeds him and sometimes pets Meredith's hair when Peter finally goes down for a nap. Instead, Meredith bites her tongue and rocks her son against her chest.

(She doesn't think about the glazed look her mother's eyes get sometimes when she's feeding Peter spoonfuls of yellowish mush. She doesn't think about the twitch in her own hands when she looks her baby in the eyes.)

-

(He has his father's eyes.)

-

For Peter's second birthday, Meredith's father and uncle and the gaggle of half-grown cousins build her a little house behind her parents' home. It's the size of a city apartment, but it has window boxes and a gravel path right to the house she grew up in. The size doesn't matter. 

She carefully feeds Peter one spoonful of mushed-up cake and frosting. He giggles. She smiles.

(Her angel's broad hands settle on her shoulders, heavy and steadying. _Our gorgeous boy_ , he murmurs in her ear. _Our little Star-Lord_.)

-

(Peter grabs the hem of her sleeve with grubby fingers and grins up at her with a mouth full of teeth.)

-

Meredith opens her eyes. The room is dark. Her window is cracked open, a breeze drifting through the room. Her toes are cold. 

She isn't sure what woke her. Her toes aren't that cold. The weather outside is clear, no thunder or even drizzle. She sits up.

The hair on the back of her neck prickles. Her room is dark. No shadows cast by moonlight or drifting clouds, just dark. She can see the breeze rustling through the window-box flowers but she can't hear them moving. The only thing she can hear is the slow -- but steadily picking up speed -- thump of her own heart.

She can't see into the corners of her room. The colors of the flowers are washed out. Her heart is racing. She raises a hand to her chest.

A wail breaks through the cold, pressing silence of the room. Peter. Peter's awake.

The floor is cold under her bare feet. Peter's door is cracked open; funny, she thought she'd closed it. He's starting to walk now, and he's beginning to figure out how to climb over the rails of his bed. His door locks from the outside. She keeps the key in her room.

(She tells herself it's to keep him safe. She doesn't think about the look her cousins get when they look at her son. She doesn't think about her mother's blank eyes, her hand moving the spoon into Peter's mouth in slow, mechanical movements.)

Peter is sitting up when she comes in. He gives her a big smile. His slowly-emerging teeth are pale glints against his gums in the faint light from the hallway.

"Hey, sweetheart," she says, leaning over to pet his hair. "Did you have a bad dream? I thought we were past the screaming, honey."

He looks up at her with his father's eyes. She blinks, and finds herself sitting in the chair with her son in her lap, stroking his back. 

She stops. Peter picks his head up from her shoulder. "Mmm," he says, frowning. (He hasn't started talking yet. He's a little behind in everything, she's found so far. She thinks it's because of his father; a being with a longer lifespan would mature more slowly, right?)

She puts her hand back, begins moving it up and down. Peter snuggles against her neck, the warm little puffs of his breath making her skin prickle.

She closes her eyes.

-

(She doesn't think about how much her hands are shaking.)

-

Peter doesn't learn to walk so much as he learns to run. He goes from crawling to wobbling on two feet to dashing through their little house, shrieking happily, his chubby little hands waving around. Meredith is endlessly grateful for her dad's foresight in making sure all the furniture has rounded edges. 

Now that he can spend his energy sprinting from room to room, Peter is more content to be held and carried. He no longer squirms out of Meredith's arms whenever she scoops him up. He lets her dad swing him up and carry him on his shoulders. He doesn't mind it when his cousins grab his hand and pull him along to participate in their games.

But he doesn't let anyone outside the family touch him. When one of the neighbors tries to shake his hand, he screams and runs off to hide behind Meredith's legs. "At least he'll be hell on any kidnappers," Meredith says, hoisting him up into her arms so he can shove his face into her neck.

(She doesn't say anything about the light hidden against her collarbone, or the pricking pain of the fingernails Peter presses against the neckline of her shirt.)

-

"Peter," she says, cupping his face in her hands. "Peter, baby, you can't scream at everyone who comes near you."

(She looks at the bridge of his nose.)

"Mom," he whines. "I don' wan' them near me."

"That's okay, honey," she soothes, swiping his hair back from his face. "But you can't scream at them. You can just walk away or ask them not to touch you."

"But," he says, frowning in confusion, "but I don' want them near me."

(She doesn't think about the faint light spiderwebbing under his skin.)

"Why not, baby?"

"They're..." He frowns. "I dunno. Weird."

"Weird?"

"Diff'ren'. Itchy." He rubs at his wrist (hiding the glow of his veins). "Don' like them."

Meredith sits back on her heels, closes her eyes. Angel, she thinks, desperate: angel I don't know what to do here, help me --

She opens her eyes. Peter's arms are wrapped around her neck. "Thanks, Mama!" he chirps, and runs off.

Meredith remains, kneeling. Her arms fall from cradling the space her son had been, palms slapping against the floor. She bends, her back one aching arch, her bangs grazing the floorboards. Her mouth feels strange; her throat is itching, burning, like she swallowed hot coals. She coughs. Liquid splatters back against her mouth and drips to the floor. 

(It's too dark to be blood.)

She wipes her face with the back of her hand. She cleans the floor with a shirt out of the hamper. She stands at the windowsill and watches the flowers until the creeping, tingling cold under her skin fades.

-

(She doesn't think: angel what was that. angel what did you tell him. angel what did you _do_ to me -- )

-

"He should go to school," one of Meredith's aunts, Pam, tells her. "Get him more accustomed to other children." She takes a sip of her wine, swilling it around and around in the glass. It's a deep red that looks more purple where it touches the glass. "Maybe he'll stop screaming then."

"I don't know," Meredith hedges. Peter's playing with some of his cousins in the broad backyard belonging to Meredith's great-uncle; she doesn't understand what game, exactly, they're playing, but there's a great deal of running and shrieking. "I... I don't want to just leave him with a stranger, you know? And I don't think he'd take well to it."

Meredith's aunt hmms and takes another sip. A drop stays on the lipstick at the corner of her mouth, a dark bead trembling on the edge of falling.

"Besides," Meredith says, looking back at her son as he pulls his cousin along by the hand. "I don't want the other kids teasing him. About... about his father."

Pam hmmms with a bit more emphasis. "Well," she says eventually, her glass nearly empty. "You're his mother."

It does not sound like a compliment. 

Meredith stands up. "Peter!" she calls, squinting toward the children backlit by the sinking sun. "It's getting late, honey."

A few other mothers, all at least five years her senior, rise from their chairs to collect their own child from the cluster of grubby-faced hooligans. Peter trots over to her, grinning. His last baby tooth grew in last week. He has the widest smile of all his cousins.

"Hello, Peter," Pam says. Meredith doesn't look at her. She kneels down and starts rubbing the dirt off Peter's face. 

"Hi," Peter says. Meredith hushes him, scrubbing at his cheek.

"What do you think of going to school, Peter?" Meredith's aunt asks. Meredith's shoulders go up. When Peter looks at her, she smiles.

(She doesn't meet Peter's eyes.)

"Like it here," Peter says. "Other kids are gross." 

Pam huffs and drains her wine. "Be a lamb and put this in the sink, would you?" she says to Peter.

"He can't reach," Meredith interjects, straightening up. "I'll take it, aunt Pam."

She settles the glass in the sink and slumps against the metal rim, shoulders near her ears. She's so tired of her family questioning her decisions. Peter is her son, her baby, her little Star-Lord. The only person who gets equal say is her angel, and with him away Meredith chooses what's best for her boy.

She's not going to get rid of him. She's not going to pretend he doesn't exist. And she's not going to obey the people who think she should.

When she comes back outside, Peter is holding Pam's hand and smiling his biggest smile at her. Pam is smiling back. There's a dark spot on her pale yellow blouse, reddish but going purple at the edges. In the late afternoon light, Peter's eyes shine.

Meredith takes Peter's other hand. He looks at her. The smile slides slowly off of Pam's face.

"Let's go, Peter," Meredith says. Without turning, she adds, "Goodbye, aunt Pam," and leads Peter away.

-

Aunt Pam dies in her sleep the next Thursday. The whole family turns up for the funeral. There, Peter decides to shake the hand of everyone he encounters after being greeted with a handshake by the pastor. Meredith would apologize, but most of the family finds it charming rather than inappropriate or irritating. Those few that seem annoyed are met with Meredith's best "He's a little boy, let him" face.

-

(No one in the family ever suggests Meredith put Peter into public school again.)

-

When Peter is seven, Meredith's mother goes to the hospital with a crushing headache and blurry vision. She has a stroke in the waiting room.

She comes home, but she's not really Meredith's mother anymore. She understands when people talk to her, but she doesn't talk back; at best, she'll nod or make some sort of noise. She can feed herself, but her right hand shakes terribly. Her short-term memory seems utterly shot. 

Meredith can barely look at her. 

-

(Her blank eyes are the worst kind of familiar.)

-

It's a warm May afternoon and Peter is taking a nap. Meredith's shift as a cashier doesn't start until later, so she's sitting in the grass behind her house, weaving flowers together. Her Walkman is at her side, the headphones snug against her ears. She's humming along, tucking stem into stem, when the shadow stretching away from her vanishes. Blue-white light falls around her shoulders in a brief caress before a warm hand settles at the back of her neck.

"Angel," she murmurs, her mouth curling up. She pulls the headphones down to her neck. "Oh, I've missed you."

"I've missed you," he answers. He takes her chlorophyll-stained hands in his and draws her to him, wraps one arm about her waist and smiles down at her. "My Brandy. My beautiful girl."

Meredith smiles and smiles, his light cool and refreshing against her skin, curling gently around her ribs, stroking the quivering muscles of her heart and lungs. She had forgotten the sensation of being truly touched by her angel. She shivers only at first before relaxing into the familiar caresses. She has so missed him.

(His eyes are the ice-pale blue of his light, the unearthly, eerie kind of beautiful that drew her to him in the first place.)

"What have you been doing?" she asks, sliding easily into their old routine. He comes, they love, he leaves; she waits, he comes, they love. "It's been so long, angel."

"I know, darling," he says. His eyes crinkle at the corners as his mouth firms. He has such expressive eyes. 

(He has such bright eyes.)

(She fixes her gaze between them.)

"My mission is going well," he tells her. He smiles. He has a special smile for the subject of his mission, the mission that brought them together, that gave her Peter. "I reached a new star system. I wish I could show it to you."

"I would love to see it," Meredith tells him. She would, in truth; space has always fascinated her. But it has been years since her angel's last visit and in that time Meredith has learned that the only stars she needs to see are the ones in her son's eyes, the distant glimmering lights he has tamed for her sake. 

She sweeps her gaze down the bridge of her angel's nose, along his cheekbones, over the curves of his eyebrows. Settles at his eyelashes, the dark fan through which peeks the halation of those brilliant eyes. "Peter's inside. I can wake him up." She pulls back, running her hand down his arm. Traces the path of her fingers with her eyes. Tangles their hands together, slender and callused fingers curled around his broad, smooth digits. She can see so much of him in Peter when she looks. She's sure that if she can get them together, put their Star-Lord into his father's arms, she'll find pieces of Peter in him too. 

He squeezes her hand, draws her closer. "I can't." He tucks her head under his chin. She can feel his gaze over her head, the pale glow fixed on the windows of her home. She has no doubt that if he wanted to see Peter through the walls, he could.

"Why not?" she asks. She doesn't try to pull away, doesn't try to get enough distance to meet his eyes. She knows how strong he is, how much power he crams into the bones of his human shape. She knows that if he wants her to stand here, she is not strong enough to move.

(She had forgotten it, the first time he returned for her. Their second meeting. She had forgotten it the last time, too. She had fallen into the incandescence of his eyes and the golden promises he made and focused on the light he poured inside of her, not the clench of his hands around her wrists.)

(She has tried so hard to forget the things about him she couldn't change.)

"If I see him," her angel says, his broad palms warm at her hip and on her back, voice so full of sorrow she'd believe it from a human, "I won't be able to leave." He strokes her hair once, twice, and settles his hand again. "I can't stay, Meredith, you know I can't. My mission is too important."

Meredith knows. She's always known. But she'd hoped, because some part of her will always be seventeen and clinging to the edge of awe to keep from falling into a pit of terror at the idea that a cosmic entity from outer space had chosen her to be his lover; and that part of her will always want what her parents had, even though the rest of Meredith has grown up and knows better.

"I cannot let myself be bound to any one planet, darling. Not until I've completed my mission." Now he pulls just slightly back, enough to cup her chin and turn her face up to his. "I wish it could be otherwise, but for the sake of the universe I cannot rest until this is over."

-

(When Meredith was seventeen years old, a star crashed into her neighbor's wheat field. She ran over, heart in her throat, excitement thick in her veins, and found an angel in a crater, bright as a bomb, wisps of light curling off his body and rising into the air like sparks -- an angel in the way her mother described them, light and benevolence and wisdom beyond human comprehension, not the angels Meredith's long-dead grandmother had known, blade-wielding beings whose true shape was enough to drive men mad.)

(Meredith scrambled down into the crater, hair bouncing around her face, and found a creature from beyond the sky who cupped her cheek with one shining palm and told her she was beautiful.) 

-

Her angel has told her many things. He is particularly fond of singing the songs she gave him back to her, _what a good wife you would be_ as she kissed his neck, _you're a fine girl_ as he stroked the still-flat plane of her stomach, _your eyes could steal a sailor from the sea_ as she gasped for breath after that first night together. He calls her _darling_ and _my Brandy_ and _beautiful dear girl_ and, every once in a while, her name. Twice, he has told her that he loves her.

"I know," she answers, because she does. She does. She curves her back just a little against his hands and is surprised when he lifts them to let her draw away. She tucks her hair behind her ear and almost forgets the green stains on her fingertips. "I'll miss you, angel."

"I know," he says. His voice thrums like it hasn't since that first night. She looks up at his face, the lightning running under the thin mask of his skin. "I will miss you, too. Dearest Meredith."

He reaches for her and for the first time she steps back before she can remember not to. His face creases. She locks her knees.

(peter's in the house he won't hurt peter he doesn't _know_ peter he won't hurt peter your parents are home he doesn't know them he doesn't need to know them to)

"My Brandy," he murmurs. He touches her hair, fits his hand to the curve of her cheek. Puts his other hand around her waist. Holds her close. "Your eyes could steal a sailor from the sea."

And -- she knows better, she _knows better_ , but -- 

She meets his eyes.

Galaxies whirl by, nebulae and dead stars there and gone before she can blink. There is a hand at her back, blazing a brand into her skin. There is a hand on her face, weaving glowing tendrils into her veins, power so cold it burns against the fragile flesh of her organs. She cannot gasp in the vacuum of space. She twitches, jerks, and the hands hold her still, hold her steady, hold her helpless. 

A mouth presses, soft as a butterfly's wing, to her forehead. A scream freezes and dies somewhere between her lungs and her mouth. Frigid-hot needles plunge into her brain, making way for a thorny knot of power to shove its way down to nestle against her brainstem.

A star goes supernova behind her eyes, a bomb going off in her brain. The mouth lifts itself from her skin. The hands grip her firmly by the forearms.

Her angel blinks, and Meredith falls from the mercifully indifferent grip of space to her knees in the grass, a lip mark shining pale on her forehead, barely able to focus on anything but the awful presence of a deadly stranger in her mind.

"I love you," her angel says. She stares at him. His eyes are as brilliant as they have ever been. She could look away, if she wasn't so stiff with horror. "I love you so much, Brandy. Too much. I can't let you keep drawing me back here."

He stands up. There's a smear of chlorophyll on his arm. He doesn't seem to notice it. 

"Don't worry," he says. He's smiling at her, the same smile he has always given her. "I'll send someone to pick up Peter when it's time. He'll be taken care of."

The sickeningly cold knot in her head throbs. She sees, very suddenly, what he means by "taken care of" should Peter not be what he wants.

She looks up at him. She could speak if she tried. She could tell him that Peter shines even brighter than he does. She could tell him that she knows about all those other children he's scattered through the stars. She could tell him to go fuck himself.

She says nothing.

And he leaves.

-

Her angel has told her many things. 

Never once has he told her "I'm sorry".

-

The doctors call it a tumor, call it inoperable, call it terminal. The doctors tell her she has months if she's lucky, weeks if she isn't. The doctors advise her to make a will, to make arrangements with her family.

She nods, and nods, and nods. Gets up. Makes a return appointment with the front desk. Walks to the parking lot. Sits down in the car she borrowed from her cousin.

Covers her face with her hands.

Cries.

-

She doesn't remember the drive home.

Later she'll make sure the car gets back to her cousin. Later she'll find out that her father asked her what was wrong a dozen times before realizing she couldn't hear him. Later she'll be told that her mother looked at her with eyes that seemed to really see and wept.

Now, though:

Now she sits on the stained floorboards of her bedroom with her son in her arms, the dim yellow light of a lamp casting their combined shadow at her feet like a mutated carpet.

"Mama," he says, and she hears his voice from far away, drifting down through the thick, choking water keeping her trapped at the bottom of a dark well. "Mama, what's wrong?"

Meredith opens her mouth to answer: the bitter water flares bright as it stings her throat, burns her tongue. She closes her mouth. Presses her face into her baby's hair. Closes her eyes.

(he burns so brightly she can always see him when he's near in the darkness he's gone in the darkness she's safe in the darkness he can't reach her)

"Mama," her Star-Lord says, a humming note of panic in his voice, "what happened?"

His hair smells like lavender, the shampoo they both use because he has her hair. He has her hair and her skin that tans before it burns, her mouth that smiles before it frowns, her nose that flattens right at the tip, her voice that turns to song before screams. 

He has his father's bright, bright eyes.

"Mama!" His little hands pat against her wet cheeks, pushing with as much strength as a seven-year-old can muster. He has her hands, her mother's hands: unflattering on a woman but perfectly proportional on a boy. His voice is high with distress. He sounds more worried than she's ever heard him. When she opens her eyes, she finds his face pressed up close, eyebrows scrunched together, face creased into something between a pout and a plea.

His veins flicker with light to the beat of his heart.

He looks up at her mutely. His eyes shine -

her head throbs -

his mouth trembles, and he begins to cry, lamplight reflecting off the sheen of wetness in his eyes.

His eyes: expressive, shaped to crinkle up into a smile, framed by the long eyelashes Meredith got from her own father. His eyes: nominally hazel, turned more brown by a smile, more green by an excited question, now more blue by tears.

(She thinks: he hasn't cried since he was a baby.)

(She thinks: he has never met his father.)

(She thinks: his father doesn't know a goddamn thing about him.)

(She thinks: he is my son, he has always been _my son_ \- )

-

(He has her eyes.)

-

"Peter, baby, I... Mama's sick."

-

(She doesn't say: I'm dying.)

-

(She doesn't say: your father did this to me.)

-

(She doesn't say: he'll do worse to you if he finds you.)

-

"Meddy, you have to," her father says, voice teetering on the edge of a shout. He keeps circling back to this point.

"No," she says. Her mother sits on the sofa, a book open in the crook of her right arm, but it's obvious that she hasn't been reading since the argument began. Meredith can't tell which one of them she agrees with. "Dad, it's - the doctors say it's terminal. It won't help me. All it's gonna do is make me sick." She points at the sheets of paper tossed on the table. "You read the same sheets, Dad, you saw the side effects. I don't want that."

"I'm not letting you just _give up!_ " her father yells. Meredith's eyes shoot upward toward Peter's bedroom. Her father follows her gaze; when he speaks again, he has lowered his voice again. "Meredith. You're my daughter. I'm not going to just - just watch you - you have to fight this, Meddy. You're a fighter, just like the rest of us Quills."

His eyes are wet. Meredith's throat feels stuffed with steel wool. 

"Dad," she says. Her eyes sting. "It's not gonna save me."

"Meddy - "

"I'm dy-... I'm _d_ _ying,_ Dad." Her head throbs at the admission. She can feel every single place _he_ ever touched her burn cold. "This isn't gonna save me. Nothing is gonna save me."

Her father's breath hitches. On the couch, Meredith's mother has closed her eyes and folded her trembling hands together. The tears Meredith is holding back turns everything blurry, colors smearing and blending between the outlines. 

"I know," her father rasps. "I know. But this might give you more time."

And that - 

(She thinks of Peter, in his bed upstairs. She has no doubt that he's not sleeping anymore, if he fell asleep at all when everyone else was so upset during dinner. She thinks of her son with his bright smile and luminous eyes. She thinks of her son's father and the promise he made her as she knelt in the grass.)

(She thinks of Peter, alone. She thinks of her son without her, the only person who knows what he is, the only person who knows _who_ he is. She thinks of her son and all the secrets she has kept from him.)

"Okay," she whispers, looking at the table. "Okay. I'll call the doctors back tomorrow morning."

-

She has lost all her hair to chemo by the time Peter's eighth birthday rolls around. Her hands shake, sometimes. She feels nauseous most of the time and has trouble keeping most food down. She's more tired than she's ever been and even small impacts leave bruises blooming on her skin. When she's alone with nothing to fill her attention, she finds her mind drifting to - to Peter's father, and all the things he showed her, and all the things he did to her.

(He never told her his name. Sitting in bed, mouth bleeding, streaks of light ever-present in her peripheral vision, she thinks she should have seen that for the sign it was.)

She bakes the cake, but lets her cousin (second cousin once removed or something like that, technically, but the Quills don't bother with that sort of nonsense) do the frosting. Tanya's hands are steady even when Meredith spits blood into the sink. 

Tanya knows Meredith is dying. Everyone knows it.

Everyone but Peter.

She couldn't make herself tell him, and since Aunt Pam's funeral everyone knows that Meredith has the final say of what happens in her son's life. She knows some of the relatives think she's making a mistake, she knows that others resent her for leaving them with the task of explaining her death to Peter once she's gone, but she doesn't care either way. Peter is her son and she knows what he can handle.

And he can't handle this.

She puts the cake down in front of him, candlelight casting flickering shadows over his excited face. He bounces in his chair as he blows them out. The smoke stings Meredith's eyes but she's smiling wide when Peter turns to face her, brown eyes squinting over his broad grin. 

-

"I love you, Mama," he says afterward, standing on his stool to dry the dishes she hands him from the sink.

"Love you, baby," she says. Neither of them say a thing about the blood lining her lips or the dim glow of his eyes.

-

She's started forgetting things.

Her family tells her most of it. She gives them her schedule in the mornings so that if she loses time or finds herself lost for what's meant to be happening, her father or Peter or one of the cousins can find her and tell her what she wanted to do. 

She's more worried about this than she lets on. Forgetting a cousin's name is one thing; she never learned a few of them to begin with. Forgetting why she's sitting in a hospital waiting room is worse, but she doesn't come to her appointments alone, so it isn't as bad as it might be.

But she has secrets. So many secrets.

And she's afraid that she used to have more.

-

She keeps a list, hidden as well as she can manage. She writes down every important secret she still knows.

Every one of them is about Peter. (Every one of them is about _him._ )

-

(She dreams of whirling galaxies and yawning vacuums, and she wakes up with a wet face and a throbbing head.)

(She dreams of a man made of pale light and pale teeth, and she wakes up with a scream locked behind her teeth and veins so prominent as to be almost luminous.)

(She dreams of a boy made of starlight who swallows the world, and she wakes up standing over her son's bed.)

-

When she remembers why she's dying, she isn't afraid of the light. The tumor is of _his_ making, after all. His light is nestled right into her brain, so it makes sense that she sees everyone the way she thinks _he_ must have.

Sound is glowing bubbles drifting through the air and popping gently against her ears. Everyone is silhouetted by their own illumination. Her mother is dimmed but still present, her father's flickers sometimes but is always there, and Peter - 

Peter is _blinding_ with how brilliant he is.

(She thinks, he's beautiful. She thinks, my little Star-Lord. She thinks, you are so much brighter than your father could ever be _._ )

She almost can't see Peter's face sometimes with how intensely he shines. She isn't worried about that, though. She could never forget her son's face.

-

(She isn't afraid of the light when she forgets why she's dying, either. But she doesn't know why she isn't afraid, and that is more frightening than the light could ever be.) 

-

Meredith almost thinks she isn't going to be able to put together _Volume Two_ for Peter's ninth birthday. Her nails are brittle and her mind wanders easily. She forgets, sometimes, to be afraid of forgetting.

(She forgets, sometimes, that she is dying.)

But she knows what songs to give him this time. She knows them like the back of her hands. 

(She knows that when the time comes, he'll need them to prove himself. His father might not see Meredith's face in their son, but he will know the songs she's sending along.)

(She hums _what a good wife you would be_ under her breath and forgets to feel sick at the melody.)

She wraps it in colorful paper and hides it as well as she can manage. Paper rustles against the back of her hand and she pulls a note free.

 _(Brandy, you're a fine girl_ , he told her as he gripped her wrists)

 _(what a good wife you would be_ , he whispered into her hair as she told herself it didn't hurt)

 _(your eyes could steal a sailor from the sea_ , he murmured as he put a time bomb in her head)

She doesn't even feel the pain of her knees hitting the bathroom tile as she vomits into the toilet.

-

She tells her dad where she's hiding Peter's birthday present, just in case. This is something she can't bear forgetting.

-

She's sitting at the kitchen table. The sun is shining through the windows. There is a blank piece of paper in front of her. There's a pen in her hand.

The sun is so bright. Why is it so bright? She squints. The curtains are closed, aren't they? Yes. Green and pale purple flowers fluttering gently over the sink. It's so bright. She squints harder. The light isn't coming through the curtains. The light is everywhere. Sunlight is golden by now. The clock said it should be. The light isn't golden, it's not even yellow. It's so white it's almost blue, like nearly-frozen milk, like bloodless skin.

The light is everywhere. She closes her eyes. The light is there too.

The light. The _light._

"Angel?" she whispers, and stands up.

-

Hospital rooms are very white. Or at least this one is. Her dad is, too, but with worry, not paint.

"You fainted," he keeps saying, and, "they say you're going to have to stay here for now, don't worry, they'll figure it out."

Peter is sitting at the end of her bed. His hand is resting on the thin blanket over her ankle, but he's so warm she can feel each of his fingers. Her baby boy. So bright. _So_ bright.

She can see him now, as her angel must be able to see him. If she squints his glow resolves into the individual threads of veins and arteries, but if she lets her eyes relax that all blends and blurs together into a Peter-shaped collection of starlight. It's beautiful -- _he's_ beautiful. Her Star-Lord.

He looks just like his father.

 _Look what we made_ , _angel_ , she thinks, running a fingertip along the glowing finger-marks left behind on her body. _Look._

_He's beautiful._


End file.
